By January 1945, with the failure of the last major German offensive in the Ardennes, it was clear to everybody that Germany had lost the war it had begun in 1939. But instead of surrendering, Hitler’s government continued fighting the war. It deliberately calculated on the death of countless people and the total destruction of its own country. Stepping up the massive terror campaign against its own population and groups that were already being persecuted, it tried to prevent the collapse of order inside the country and to mobilise all remaining reserves for the war. In those chaotic final months of the war the German population was caught in a permanent state of tension between destruction and terror, confusion and fear of the future. Using individual examples, the exhibition gives an overview of the various ways in which people behaved and acted at that time.